William Stafford Birthday Celebration

Tuesday, January 19 at 7:00pm The Lake Oswego Public Library and the Friends of William Stafford present an evening of poetry in honor of William Stafford featuring former Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen and writer and Professor Kim Stafford.

Oregon's sixth Poet Laureate, Paulann Petersen has six full-length books of poetry, most recently Understory from Lost Horse Press. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and received the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts. She serves on the board of Friends of William Stafford, organizing the January Stafford Birthday Events.

Kim Stafford has taught since 1979 at Lewis & Clark College, where he is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute and co-director of the Documentary Studies Program. He also serves as the literary executor for the estate of William Stafford.  As part of this evening's program, he will share poems he has written as blessings to engage and honor individual people at times of change.

William Stafford was born in Kansas in 1914, and later moved to Oregon where he taught English literature at Lewis and Clark College. Stafford published numerous volumes of poetry and prose during his lifetime including Traveling Through the Dark, for which he won the National Book Award in 1963.

This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Lake Oswego Public Library. The library is located at 706 Fourth Street, Lake Oswego.  For more information, contact Alicia Yokoyama at 503-534-4228 or ayokoyama@ci.oswego.or.us.